Experimenting with `human.json`

paul@paulwalk.net (Paul Walk) — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Inspired by Alan Levine (AKA Cogdog) I added a human.json to this website:

{  
  "version": "0.1.1",  
  "url": "https://www.paulwalk.net",  
  "vouches": [  
    {  
      "url": "https://cogdogblog.com/",  
      "vouched-at": "2026-03-23"  
    }  
  ]  
}

This is a machine-readable file designed to indicate to the world that the content here (all of it!) is written by a human - me - and not generated by a so-called "AI" system.

Beto Dealmeida, the creator of this new protocol, says:

One of the problems with the internet today is that a lot of the content is AI generated. There's no way to know for sure if a site is maintained by a real human or if it's just slop. The only way to know for sure is by getting to know the authors, which usually takes time and requires developing a relationship with them through other channels, like email or social media. But what if we could expand that trust by building a web of vouches between sites?

Beto Dealmeida: The human.json Protocol

This idea feels very "web-like" to me - in the sense that it works as the web was designed to work in the beginning. Indeed, it has something in common with older initiatives such as as blog-rolls and web-rings.

Since I learned about this via Alan's blog, it seemed only polite to make his blog the first that I "vouch" for in my human.json file.

This protocol is very new, and the author is inviting feedback. In fact, I already found a small issue with the protocol: it requires me to assert the canonical identifier (URL) for my website in the form of a prefix - allowing anything with that prefix to be covered by this assertion. So, the prefix I would like to use for this site is https://paulwalk.net, which is what I would consider to be the canonical URL for this website. However, the URL https://www.paulwalk.net is the one most likely to be used by others, and my website generator software (Hugo) is configured to use this - so this is the one I have used in my human.json file.

I notes that someone else had raised this issue, and that the next version of the protocol will support adding multiple canonical URLs to solve this problem.

Human-Json on Paul Walk's Website

Experimenting with `human.json`